Movin' Up-date

Well, it's over. The Wisconsin State RR in spring prairie and it was quite a day. Finn would say I careered it (up a hill even). Here's how it unfolded: Baur drove down last night and spent the night because today was his first race. I gave him the tour of Waukesha, my involvment with the city anyway, and we made pasta with tomatoes. Woke up this morning and had a decent breakfast of eggs and cold pasta and started in on the first of 3 power bars. The race we were looking at was 6 laps with a total distance of 39 miles. There was only one section of flat and that was dead into a wind that hovered between 12-18 mph all day. The rest of the course had uphill rollers and a pretty decent decent as well as an approx. 1000 ft climb at 10-12% (I am unsure) that was quite difficult. On my saturday ride with my team for the first time Jeff T. attacked and I stuck on his wheel and then snuck around him; this was the strategy I used today... I'm pretty sure the field was somewhere in the mid fifties to low sixties, all cat 4/5. I think I might have trained too hard all week with tuesday at Hartland (55 miles at least but my heart screwed up at the end, I think it was nutrition, and then another 60 the next day for the DD ride) and then took thursday off, easy 1.5 on Friday and I felt just a little fatigued. All day my legs didn't feel all that fast, I felt like I was working quite hard the entire race even though I maybe only was out front pulling for oh 4 minutes total... Well there were some early foolish attacks and Brian did a good job of keeping me out of the wind for the first half lap. On the rolling/spun-out descent we lost contact when I moved to the front.

On the front a bunch of guys from Endeavor were hanging out as well as the two Team-Wisconsin guys, one of them, Tony, is pretty strong and we usually mix it up on the tuesday and wednesday rides. However, one guy from Team Metric worked pretty much the entire race, very few people pulled through for him and he tried to break away 4 different times. I was in his 3rd break with about 7 other guys and we didnt work together that well so we got reeled in after about 6 minutes off the front; we probably had no more than thirty seconds on the peloton. In classic style I either text-booked on the front when I had to be there or just simply sat in anywhere from 4th to 40th wheel. On the final climb, the thousand-footer, I just let myself get passed, but not too badly, climbing at my own pace. By the fourth lap it was pretty apparent where work was necessary and where the bunch would just come back together by itself. Still, it was a pretty fast armchair ride at parts, avg hr was 161 for 1:39 minutes. We averaged at least 23 mph. Didnt realize that, sheesh. I was sitting about 12 as we came around the final corner and I just stayed in my bigring and hauled it up.

Quote of the day: "this is your race and you're losing it"

I passed the leader, a guy from Endeavor who had that quote yelled at him. who would eventually take second place, near the top of the hill and sat down to recover somewhat. I looked back and saw that he had started his sprint and was about 12 bikelengths back, so I got back out of my saddle and just hammered it in for the win, taking the Cat 4/5 WI state championship. It felt so good to finally give it my all on the final climp and just slip past everyone. At the podium the 3rd place guy said he was on my wheel but got boxed in as I was dropping him. Endeavor finished at 5" and 3rd at 8".

This means a few things:

My team cleaned up. John Van Susteren, team captain soloed for 4 laps in the 30+ category for a win by 1'50 over the second place solost and John Voigt, the initial team leader took fifth but first in his age category (30+, Van Susteren is 44 and so won the 35+ sub category as well) which means at least three state jerseys.

And I cat up to 4. John says I could become a 2 by the end of summer if I work toward it, 3 for sure. Superweek starts July 6th and I plan on pulling down some top fives there in the 4/5 race and then catting up afterward to finish out the summer.

That and I really need to clean my room finally...